1.45pm

Blair urged to protest at 'legalisation' of US torture

Amnesty International today called on Tony Blair to protest against the US administration's "supposed legalisation of torture" when he meets the US president, George Bush, at the G8 summit.

The human rights groups was responding to allegations that US justice department lawyers had advised the CIA that torturing al-Qaida suspects "may be justified" if it was "in order to prevent further attacks on the United States".

The legal advice came in a memo, which was today published in the Washington Post. It was drafted by the department's office of legal counsel in August 2002 following a CIA request for guidance.

The memo concluded that torture amounts to more than inflicting moderate or fleeting pain, and "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death".

It also stated that arguments centring on "necessity and self-defence could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" should any US interrogator face prosecution for torturing detainees.

The document was believed to have been the legal basis for the March 2003 Pentagon briefing, published in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, which stated that US laws prohibiting torture by US forces do "not apply to the conduct of US personnel" at Guantánamo Bay.

It is understood to have been drawn up by Pentagon lawyers after the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, asked for guidance on the logistical, policy and legal issues associated with interrogation techniques.

Despite the evidence that the US administration was examining how far it could go in interrogations, officials insist that detainees held by US forces in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan have been treated humanely, with the exceptions of some inmates held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

A spokesman for the White House counsel's office told the Washington Post: "The president directed the military to treat al-Qaida and Taliban [suspects] humanely and consistent with the Geneva conventions."

However, Neil Durkin, of Amnesty International, condemned the US attempt to seek justification for opting out of international law, saying that the "UN convention against torture, to which the US is a signatory, is very clear that there is no right of derogation".

"No state may decide it is no longer bound by the provisions of the convention, no matter what the circumstance," he added. "The arbitrary use of new 'legal advice' to say the US is not bound by the convention threatens to undermine the very credibility of international human rights law."

"We call on the prime minister to use to opportunity, at the G8 summit, to raise his inevitable concerns about the supposed legalisation of torture by the US administration."

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "The prime minister is on his way to the summit ... [but] I'm not aware that he will be talking to Mr Bush about this. There are a lot of issues to discuss - I do not know whether he will be raising this one."

"We don't sanction torture - any allegations of torture by British personnel are investigated," the spokeswoman added.

The Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell, expressed concerns about the US briefings, saying: "If this leak is accurate, then it puts into very sharp relief the behaviour towards detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison."

"It is not difficult to envisage that, in legal proceedings to follow, individual soldiers will argue the defence of justification by reason of this legal advice," he added. "These reports can only add further to the embarrassment of the Bush administration and, by association, other members of the coalition, including Britain."